Name: 為什麼我們會被毒藥專家餵食？ (Why Are We Being Fed By A Poison Expert?)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T06:04:10.000Z
Duration: 5 min 19 s
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And just like Farming's smaller cousin, Gardening,

the biggest pain in the arse are the weeds.

Now in your garden at home, with enough motivation you could pull them all out by hand.

So you use chemicals. And nothing kills those bloody weeds better than

the famous makers of Joni Mitchell’s favourite DDT,

Agent Orange - which aside from the occasional birth defect,

did a great job of destroying the rice fields during the Vietnam War;

and PCB - everyone’s favourite carcinogenic environmental pollutant.

But with the revolutionary key ingredient in RoundUp - glyphosate -

the folks at Monsanto have added not just enormous profits to their bottom line,

but also the word ‘probably’ in front of the word ‘carcinogenic’.

Monsanto – making the definite probable since 1901.

how do you spray your crops to kill weeds without killing the crops as well?

And how does a company with a terrible health and environmental track record

but also one of the biggest patents in the history of agriculture

keep the profits rolling in when the patent runs out?

Easy - take all that hard earned experience making poisons that kill things,

Throughout the 90s, Monsanto began modifying the DNA of basic staple crops

Now we’ll save the much needed discussion on the dangers of messing with the DNA of something

you put in your mouth and feed to your cattle for another episode.

And we should point out that this technology doesn’t give the plant a magic force field

that deflects the RoundUp. It still absorbs just as much poison as the weeds -

Thanks to this 'nature tweak' they now control in the US market 80% of corn & 93% of soy.

And as Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman are to Wes Anderson films,

so are corn & soy to modern food processing...they’re in everything.

At this point you might be wondering, 'how is this allowed to happen,

Two things real quick. Market forces and political influence.

I know, I know. You’re about to switch off -

‘come on Dan, big business controls politics - tell us something we don’t know!’

But the example I’m about to give you is an absolute doozy.

Remember back in 2013 when the US government faced total shutdown?

Well just before the legislation they needed to keep the lights on was passed,

The Joker disguised as a human - Roy Blunt,

secretly attached an unrelated amendment, which the good folks at Monsanto helped to write,

It gave very open-ended powers to prevent the US Judiciary from banning or limiting

even if adverse health effects were revealed.

The legislation was passed but expired later through a sunset clause in September 2013

Even still, this raises a veritable cornucopia of WTFs.

First, the wording of the amendment suggests that Monsanto knew

- it’s the legislative equivalent of Bill Clinton spraying Monica’s dress with Scotch Guard

Second, for an amendment that strange, irrelevant and largely unprecedented to pass,

would require at least 50% of US senators to either agree with the legislation or be too lazy to read it

- ok so that’s less of a WTF and more of an NSS?

And third, how are we in a situation where the provider of a huge slice of the world’s food bowl

is synonymous with adverse health effects?

Since 1996 Monsanto and four other huge agro-chemical businesses

have quietly bought up almost every small seed manufacturer around the globe.

And with their unprecedented control over the seed supply,

they have fought to stop a natural process as old as time -

farmers saving seed from their current crop to be used in the next harvest.

Going to the extraordinary lengths of suing individual farmers for patent infringement.

They aren’t protected by government subsidies and have to take out loans just to afford seeds,

and can have entire entire crops wiped out by unpredictable weather.

but Monsanto prevents them from saving seeds as an insurance policy against the weather.

The Indian government directly links to the introduction and spread of GM cotton

to a significant rise in the suicide rate of farmers.

Farmers in Australia have lost their organic certification when GM seeds have

blown onto their properties from neighbouring farms.

And these are farmers attempting the increasingly difficult task of sourcing and growing non-GMO seeds.

And let’s hope more farmers join them in light of recent revelations.

Sure, Monsanto rejected the World Health Organisations findings which wasn't surprising.

But what was  interesting was some of the major studies used to discredit those findings

were authored by scientists who have acted as paid consultants to Monsanto.

Because that’s how the biggest agribusiness in the world rolls.

Using vast reserves of cash and influence to distract us all from the key question -

Why are we all being fed by a poison expert?